154 THE MENDEL JOURNAL 



Nature's balance restored by a great indemnity, 

 towards which even super-man may be called upon 

 to contribute.* 



It is vain to urge that because in our conception 

 of things Nature appears brutal in her processes, 

 therefore with regard to Man we should become 

 artificial and ignore Nature. To endeavour to do 

 so is to deliberately reject the fact, that Man is but 

 a unit in Nature and is only one link in her long 

 chain. Not even his possession of speech and of a 

 long tradition raises him above it or removes him 

 from it. If our resort to artificial methods is 

 to result in increasing the sum total of human misery, 

 then whether there be butcher-birds, earthquakes, 

 tsetse flies, and typhoid germs, or whether there 

 be none of these things, our clear duty is to go back 

 nearer to that Great Mother upon whose breast we 

 have been reared to our present greatness. 



This much we can say of Her: that while even 

 the butcher-birds dwell in our memories, we know 

 the she-bear loves its cub, that the lioness will fight 

 to her death so long as in so doing she protects her 

 offspring. Day and night these wild instinctive 

 mothers, born of Nature, hunt and care for their 

 offspring. It is only under the artificial conditions 

 where butcher's birds are not, but metaphysicians 

 and others are, that parents are reared who spend 

 their money in the public-houses, and whose children 



* It is not difficult to conceive at least one process by which a given 

 species of tsetze fly may keep another reduced in numbers or even induce 

 its elimination. 



